CHICAGO (RNS) — When six synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America elected female bishops in May, they set a record for the most women chosen in one year to lead the mainline Protestant denomination’s geographical subdivisions.
Among the six were the denomination’s first African-American female bishops: the Rev. Patricia A. Davenport, elected May 5 to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod, and the Rev. Viviane Thomas-Breitfeld, elected the next day to the South-Central Synod of Wisconsin.